China: A New History, Second Enlarged Edition

This is a book written by an expert who devoted his life to understanding China and its history. The result is a highly informative look at the entirety of Chinese history. Because so much material is covered, the coverage of any period is brief, but the learning and insight of the treatment is manifest nonetheless. The treatment of the 20th Century is significantly more detailed than the treatment of the preceding thirty centuries, and would be an extremely valuable read for anyone wanting to understand contemporary China. The final chapters (dealing with recent Chinese history) are a supplement added by another scholar. The political and interpretive perspective of this author is differs somewhat from what one encounters in the rest of the text, and it is worth keeping that in mind while reading through this material. This is a great introduction to Chinese history for someone looking to be introduced to this topic who is willing to be a serious reader.

This book is a great overview of Chinese history. While true that Spence's Volume has more artistic qualities this volume is mor than sufficient for the student of history. Clear and concise, this book describes the major events of Chinese history while integrating a plethora of supplemental and recent scholarship. Anyone interested in diving further into Chinese history can use Fairbank and Goldman as a launching platform.

This was the first book on China I read, and I did it at my own leisure. I must say that this book was quite the enjoyable read for the most part. It has a wonderful source and works cited section in the back as well as a very useful refrence index. This should be the first book anyone reads if he/she is intrested in Chinese history. The author has taken the privalege to refrence many other authoritative books and material on specific subjects when mentioned (for instance, mateiral on ancient Chinese warfare). I am a bad judge of "bias" or anything like this, although I did not detect any in my first reading of this book (although I may notice some if I were to read this for a second time). The only "borring" part of the book, in my opinion, was the first 1/8 of the book which discussed early human records in China and some of the earlier dynasties (although this is probably just my temperment). Otherwise, the book is excellently written and holds a lot of information for a survey.

I enjoyed this book immensely, and first read it in the late 1980s as part of an honors course in the history of China. Much of my interest was in the revolutionary period, and Fairbank gave me a keen insight into the many variables impacting on that era. Everyone should read this book. It illustrates much of the rationale behind "History repeats itself." And, we, in the US are experiencing some of the influences that Sun Yat Sen was was campaigning under at that time. . . in elections!